Business Tech

Ahead of report, FLA chief says Foxconn has 'tons of issues'

Though a full report from the Fair Labor Association's audit of Foxconn isn't expected till next month, the group's head says the FLA has already found "tons of issues."

In a telephone interview with Bloomberg, FLA Chief Executive Auret van Heerden told the outlet that the group had found "tons of issues," and that "I believe we're going to see some very significant announcements in the near future."

What those issues are were not disclosed by van Heerden, Bloomberg reported.

The remarks come just a few days after van Heerden described early impressions of the company'more

Originally posted at Apple Talk

Privacy invasion: There's an app for that

You'd think by now that tech companies would have figured out how to do right by you when it comes to privacy. But no, not so much, not when your personal data is just soooo tempting.

Matters came to a head this week when Apple announced a change to its developer guidelines--it said iOS applications that collect user contact data break its rules and that a software fix, coming at an unspecified date, will prohibit this behavior. That followed the controversy that erupted earlier in the month, when Path--a popular iOS and Android app--was found to be collecting more

Ultrabooks are underpricing Apple at retail--and they'd better

Ultrabooks from Toshiba, Acer, and Samsung remain at relatively low prices at major retailers like Best Buy compared to analogous offerings from Apple.

listed at Best Buy for $799.99.Prices for the 13-inch Toshiba Portege (Z835-P330) and 13-inch Acer Aspire S3 (S3-951-6646) have stayed at $799 for many weeks since they were announced last fall. Currently, both are

Comparable 13-inch MacBook Air laptops from Apple are typically priced a few hundred dollars more.

Apple is an important benchmark because the ultrabook category was created, in part, to compete with the increasingly popular MacBook Air. And an analyst said this week more

Originally posted at Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

Mozilla contemplates nuking McAfee

The SiteAdvisor add-on for Firefox evaluates search results to let you know how safe a site is to visit before you go there, but one Mozilla engineer says that it drags down Firefox and causes huge memory leaks.

It's just the kind of problem that Mozilla doesn't want to be dealing with as it finds itself knee-deep in an ambitious development plan and surrounded by ever-tougher competition.

Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote wrote a blog post early today in which he recommended that Firefox more

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Clearwire to have 5,000 LTE sites running by June 2013

Clearwire said it has the funding it needs to set up TD-LTE sites around the U.S., and it plans to roll out thousands of them in the coming year.

Speaking earlier this week in an earnings call, Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch said that his company plans to have 5,000 LTE sites in operation by June 2013. Shortly thereafter, Clearwire hopes to add 3,000 more sites.

Sprint, which is the majority shareholder in Clearwire, recently signed a deal that could see it hand over $1.6 billion in funding to Clearwire. Under the deal's terms, Sprint has more

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Faster Chromebooks to leapfrog today's slowpokes

Because I've got cloud-computing religion, you'd think that Google convincing me to like a Chromebook would be as easy as preaching to the choir.

It's not.

After a few months using Samsung's 3G-equipped Series 5 Chromebook, I can firmly say the first-generation Chromebooks are not for me, for one big reason: sluggish performance.

But there's some good news here for people like me: There are new, faster Chromebooks on the way, Google revealed to me.

"We remain very excited about Chromebooks. We got a lot of positive feedback, and we are really looking forward to more

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Google's Dart language arrives in Chrome test version

Google has released a test version of its browser with the ability to run programs written in Dart, the company's language designed to improve on JavaScript.

"This release of Chromium with Dart VM integration is a technology preview, and should not be used for day-to-day browsing. After more testing and developer feedback, we plan to eventually include the Dart VM in Chrome," said Google programmers Anton Muhin, Vijay Menon, and Pavel Podivilov, in a blog post yesterday.

Google developed Dart as a way to improve Web programming, for example with better performance and with a language it thinks is more

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Intellectual Ventures targets AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile on patents

Intellectual Ventures today filed a patent infringement complaint against three of largest cellular providers in the U.S.more

Former chairman, six others arrested over Olympus scandal

Japanese lawmakers went on an arrest spree today, nabbing seven people who were allegedly involved in the Olympus accounting coverup.

According to the New York Times, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, former Olympus chairman and president, was among the men arrested in Tokyo today. Japanese prosecutors told the Times that Kikukawa and two other former Olympus executives, have been detained on suspicion of falsifying financial statements. Two investment bankers and two of their associates were also arrested for alleged involvement in the coverup.

Olympus' trouble started in October when the company--led by Kikukawa--fired president and CEO Michael Woodford. Following his dismissal, Woodford presented documents to the media more

Originally posted at The Digital Home